Before we continue, a disclaimer about the “no rules” concept: as an individual and a representative of HR Resolved, I am not advocating for allowing inappropriate or illegal activity in the workplace, ever! I’m also not advocating that employers should take on an otherwise preventable exposure to employee risks.

Leading with Shared Values & Clear Behavioral Expectations

When businesses post open roles, then interview and eventually hire using a defined set of values, they are taking the early first steps in creating the culture they wish to see. That’s right, culture is not about free beer & cake but rather shared values and more importantly impactful behavioral expectations. The more effective the business is at building a clear and measurable set of expected behaviors and holding its team accountable to them, the less constraining and creativity-crushing rules need to be established and used to govern daily execution.

Through smarter HR, in other words, executing Organization Design and Employee Performance Optimization in the technically correct way, founders can worry less about policy and governance over little daily details like when employees should show up for work, how they conduct themselves on social media, and how they book business travel.

Leading Human Resources with values & behavioral expectations, not micromanaging through rules, helps free emotional and intellectual horsepower across the organization to focus on leading, inspiring and good ol’ doing. Best practices as a backstop, not rules as a stop sign, help set a minimum guideline for success.

The above isn’t 100% absolute for every organization, there are certainly exceptions. That said, if you’re employing knowledge workers, or even skilled labor, winning like this is well within ‘easy’ purview of your organization.

Please subscribe to further explore the many steps leaders can take toward building a culture that best enables happy, aligned employees performing where and how they are needed, driving profit into your business!

Still curious? Want to continue challenging classic HR paradigms? Please reach out to start a conversation.